The Airbnb Squatter Has Been Officially Kicked Out Of That Palm Springs Condo

Friday

Aug 22, 2014 at 12:56 PM

Julie Bort

Cory Tschogl's months-long ordeal with a man and his brother who rented her Palm Springs condo via Airbnb and then refused to leave is officially over.

As of Thursday, Maksym Pashanin and Denys Pashanin have been legally evicted from the apartment, Tschogl told Business Insider. We have been covering her ordeal since it first began in mid-July. In an email to us, she wrote:

I just legally reclaimed my condo down in Palm Springs, and I'm happy to report that the press's involvement helped smoke out those Airbnb squatters much sooner than expected!! A great Success!! Thanks a bunch.

Airbnb is a wildly popular way for thrifty travelers to find accommodations worldwide. It lets people rent spare rooms or homes to strangers over the internet. Beside the many great experiences among Airbnb's 15 million guests, there are times when things go wrong.

In this case, the Pashanin brothers rented a condo from Tschogl for 44 days, paying for only 30 and then refusing to leave or pay the rest of what they owed when the time came for them to vacate.

Thanks to a quirk in California law, when a someone rents a place for 30 days or longer, they can be sometimes be considered a tenant, and a homeowner must go through the full eviction process to get them out. That can sometimes take months and cost thousands of dollars.

When Tschogl first tried to get Pashanin to leave by telling him she was shutting off the utilities, he threatened to sue her. (Read the threatening texts here.)

Maksym Pashanin publicly admitted he was squatting and that he would squat again in a message on Kickstarter. He and his brother ran a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised nearly $40,000 in 2013 — a video game — but so far has yet to deliver on the product.

When angry Kickstarter backers starting writing in about the lack of progress on the video game and the squatting, Pashanin glibly replied, "Ok guys, what's the latest deets on the drama? 10/10, would squat again."

He also reportedly avoided a speedier eviction by wearing a disguise when entering and exiting the condo.

He won't be using the service to find another victim, Airbnb tells Business Insider, and neither will his brother. Using several tools, the company has "permanently banned [Pashanin] from using Airbnb."

Pashanin was found, however, to have run-ins with other California landlords with apartments rented through methods other than Airbnb. In 2009, the San Francisco courts evicted he and his brother from a San Francisco apartment after they stopped paying rent, court documents show. And in 2012 Maksym Pashanin sued his landlord for $10,000 over noise from "ongoing construction" in the backyard. The judge dismissed the case and Pashanin moved out.

Business Insider covered the whole story as it unfolded:

Airbnb Host: A Guest Is Squatting In My Condo And I Can't Get Him To Leave

Airbnb Squatter Says He Would Totally Squat Again, And He Also Hasn't Delivered On A $40,000 Kickstarter

An Airbnb Host Got Drunk And Let Himself Into The House While A Business Insider Employee Was SleepingPHOTOS: An Airbnb Guest Held A Huge Party In This New York Penthouse And Trashed ItA Hacker Is Trying To Sell Counterfeit US Money On Reddit

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